


The Present(ly) Tense

by KeelTheLight



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: But they might be sometimes, Could be Dangerous, Ficlet Collection, Flash Fic, John's POV (mostly), M/M, Slice of Life, Stories Aren't Necessarily Connected, could also be romantic, or something
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-18
Updated: 2017-06-19
Packaged: 2018-11-15 17:25:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11235726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KeelTheLight/pseuds/KeelTheLight
Summary: The (not so) exciting life and times of two screwed-up individuals (presumably) in some sort of relationship.This is a COLLECTION of (mostly) unrelated short-form fiction.





	1. Gladly. SH

**Author's Note:**

> Most will be post Season 4, but others might not be. Most will be short.

 

 

**Can you please go pick up Rosie from daycare?  They said she’s running a fever.  I can’t leave work early again.**

 

**What are you doing?  Are you out?  Can you go pick her up right now?**

 

**We are not doing this again.  You just texted me 17 times about foot bones not even an hour ago.  I know you’re ignoring me.  Can you help?**

 

**Can you help?**

 

**SHERLOCK GO PICK UP ROSIE.**

 

The unanswered texts were starting to stack up, and I was beginning to feel like a nagging girlfriend.  But, I knew the only way to beat Sherlock at his own game was to be just as persistent, just as inappropriately pushy, and just as bloody annoying as he was.  Being thus acquainted with him did that; I used to be an everyday normal sort of bloke, believe it or not.  A bit broken, a bit screwed up — but relatively normal, all things considered.  Now, after Sherlock happened, I’m still broken and screwed up, but at least I’ve got another broken and screwed up person to muck about with, yeah?  Time for another text message.

 

**That’s it. When I get home tonight, I’m tossing out that thing that’s been in the fridge for ages now. Not sure what it is, but it’s going in the bin first thing.**

 

Every time I leapt into an unoccupied exam room to fire off a new text, I felt the burn rise – _Oh, you won’t win this time, Sherlock Holmes. Nooo, you. Will. NOT._

 

**I’m not joking.**

 

**I’m NOT joking.**

 

Still nothing, and there probably will continue to be nothing from him.  That's how Sherlock is most of the time: unbearably rude, impossibly selfish, unbelievably...  I had to stop myself, because Sherlock is exactly as advertised.  You cannot expect much from a person who's never let on that you ought to expect anything at all from him.  Silly, me.

 

Just as I was resigning myself to break it gently to my employer that I would be dodging out early -- yet again -- from another busy afternoon at the surgery my mobile dinged.  Not from Sherlock’s number, but from Greg Lestrade’s.  I read it and breathed a sigh of relief.  Then I read it again.

 

**On my way. SH**

 

And that was it.  No theatrical complaints.  No bargaining for future favours.  Just “on my way.”  I decided to fire off another missive, just to make sure things were clear.  You never knew.  I never knew.  Not with Sherlock, anyway.

 

**Take her straight home, yeah?  I’ll be done here around half 4.  Ring me when you get home.**

 

And the reply, almost immediately this time:

 

**Gladly. SH**


	2. Completely Innocent and Strange

“We can’t keep doing this,” I said from where I sit on a criminally uncomfortable hard plastic chair.  I’ve dragged it closer to the bed, just a hair closer and only so I could rest my feet on the bed whilst I'm obliged to be stationed here all night.  My leg twinged.  My shoulder ached.  Mycroft's orders, I told myself.  I wouldn't be here otherwise, would I?  Being Sherlock's minder is something that seems to come naturally to me, but it's gotten harder, I'll admit.

 

“Keep doing what?” Sherlock asked.  He looked suitably exhausted, but he did a good job hiding it behind an affectless face.  His hair had dried greasy and tangled on his forehead.

 

“This,” I said, spreading my arms around the room in a sweeping, expansive gesture.  I meant all of it, everything Sherlock put me through and everything Sherlock put himself through.  "Something needs to change."

 

He held my gaze, met it with that look he often gave me.  Curious, calculating.  Wondering how far he could push me.  Trying to gauge emotion, no doubt.  While he was no emotionless automaton as I might have suspected earlier in our friendship, Sherlock was still a student of human emotion.  So many of his reactions were learned responses.  He memorized them by rote, sifted through “the good” and “the bit not good.”  He called upon them when he needed to.  Which also meant he could put on whatever emotion was convenient for the moment.  This much I’d figured out.  He was brilliant, really.  Alarmingly, so.  A truly, incredibly, alarmingly brilliant human being.

 

But would this be too much, going on like this?  I felt the limit coming to meet us and our unique friendship.  I felt each drugs binge led us somewhere I didn’t want to be anymore, and somewhere I couldn’t be, not with a small child to look after and raise up into a decent person.  I felt, stupidly, that it was me against the world, and me against Sherlock, too, at times — Sherlock who’d been made fairly mad by his own mistakes, his own ego.  He knew I was still angry with him, and he seemed to welcome that anger.  

 

I know Sherlock quite well, and I know he’d call suffering my anger a penance of sorts.  I’ll admit, he is an easy person to be angry with.  I did blame him for what happened to Mary and for what happened to me after Mary and for what happened to me before Mary… and for everything else.  I blamed him for everything.  And he knew that.

 

I definitely made him know it when I beat the tar out of him in front of Culverton Smith, and I made him know it when I left him there on the floor afterward.

 

I’m not proud of myself for any of it. If Sherlock’s absolution from his own pressing guilt meant nearly killing himself with drugs and tricking me into beating him up to keep him from stabbing people with scalpels, then no thank you.  I never asked to be part of that, yet here I am.  Again.  I always seem to be the unwitting participant in Sherlock’s experiments, but that one had gone too far.  

 

“ _You_ can’t keep doing this,” I rephrased.  “Neither can I.”  I put two feet flat on the floor and leant forward.  “You are an addict, and you need to stop.”  I again held his gaze, but there was something strange and empty now.  Nothing at all typical of my sharp and ever-aware friend.

 

“I am not an addict,” Sherlock said, voice an odd, grating rasp, “I am a—“

 

“No,” I stopped him.  “A _user_ is no different than an addict.  In fact, you’re the worst kind of addict: one who believes they have control.  One who believes, despite reality, that their habit is not capable of harm.”  I leant even closer to him.  “You’ve been high as a kite for days.  Do you even remember?”

 

“Remember what?” Sherlock asked.

 

This time I was the one to catch his gaze.  I held onto it.  He’s still too high to even fake emotion, which left him looking raw and, for once, honest.  “Sherlock,” I started to say, and I — without thinking — reached out and put a palm against his cheek.  He felt hot and his skin was dry.  _I’m fond of you, despite it all_ , I thought.  Fondness, a soft emotion, something Sherlock disliked.  It was also fondness which prompted me to rub at his cheek with the pad of my thumb.  I swallowed and fought to figure out a simple way to explain what had happened over the past forty-eight hours.  My own fears of what might be coming.

 

Fact was, Sherlock had ended up in hospital after a manic episode fueled mostly by the damned drugs and probably some sort of mental break as well.  I had found him in the middle of the destroyed sitting room of 221B, furniture turned over, a coffee table smashed to bits, books tossed from shelves.  He had been scribbling frantically on one wall with a thick felt tip pen, and if I squinted and tilted my head, it appeared to be a very detailed map of London’s Underground.  When he saw me, he began to pace, and he began to babble about a sister.  That was when I noticed that he’d gotten ahold of my pistol.  He held it in his left hand, finger on the trigger.  Sherlock never was one for firearms safety.  I couldn’t stop myself, and I’d asked him rather loudly, whilst he was in the midst of this mess, “What in the hell is going on here?”  That was, apparently, the wrong question to ask in that moment.

 

“Remember what?” Sherlock asked again, jarring me back.  He brushed my hand away from his face, then tried to sit up straighter, and when that proved to be a bit too strenuous, he settled for looking around the room in confusion.  “Why am I here?  Why have you brought me here?”

 

“Hey,” I said.  I kept ahold of his hand, clasped it firmly, calmly.  “It’s all fine now.  You’ll get some help.”

 

“Help? What for?” Sherlock asked in suspicion.  “Did you call my brother?  You did.  This is Mycroft.  I knew it.”

 

“No,” I said.  “It’s not just Mycroft.  It’s everybody who gives a damn about you, Sherlock.  So if you blame your brother, you’ll have to blame me as well, and some other people, too.”

 

“Then I will,” he replied.  He looked at me briefly, then looked down at our hands clasped together.

 

I gave him a close-lipped smile, something meant to be reassuring.  _It’s fondness_ , I suddenly thought again.  _Completely innocent and strange._ Then I leant in even closer; in fact, I had to stand up a bit.  He didn’t move away, even as my lips touched his temple.  I kept them there for longer than I’d intended, and when I knew it had to end, I rested my forehead against his and let out a breath.  “It’s all fine now,” I repeated.


	3. The Non-Case of the Detached Foot

I’m trying to figure out why in the _hell_ Sherlock Holmes thought it appropriate to bring my three-year-old to the morgue at St. Bart’s — “on a case,” he’d explained.  Well, fuck that.  Excuse my language, please, but I’m quite worked up about it.

 

And it wasn’t just a friendly visit to the morgue office to say “hi” at Molly — who is still Rosie’s favourite auntie, my sister Harry not included — but it was a visit to the proper morgue, with the bodies and the dead people smell and the general bloody creepiness that is not in any way appropriate for any three-year-old let alone _my_ three-year-old.

 

But Sherlock — I should say, my _dearest_ fucking Sherlock — is an idiot, and when I showed up to collect (rescue) my daughter — from the bloody morgue, when she should be at home napping or banging away at her toy alphabet xylophone — my idiot flatmate and ill-prepared child-minder — _my fucking mistake, truly_ — has not a clue what the problem might be.  ( _Master of deduction, my foot!_ ) 

 

Of course I was already in a sour mood, having had to leave work early to put a stop to this madness, thanks to a warning text from Molly herself, but I made sure to take a deep and calming breath before opening my mouth.  If I spoke too harshly, I knew Sherlock’s look of dejection would be the end of all of us, and I also knew he was doing me a massive favour, picking up Rosie from daycare and taking care of all other sundry things around the house.  ( _Shocking as it may seem._ )  He didn’t know any better; that’s what I told myself. 

 

( _I left my child with someone who “didn’t know any better”!_ )

 

With me working steadily again, I asked a lot from Sherlock — _Sherlock, just my flatmate, mind you!_ — during the past couple years.  Child rearing is not an easy undertaking, and while poor Sherlock was hardly a natural, he seemed capable enough and — apparently — willing to at least appear helpful.

 

Now this… “morgue visitation”… it happened, and as soon as Molly texted me about it, I knew it must be dealt with before the both of them — my dearest, most idiotic Sherlock and my daughter, who would be more of a de facto party, I admit — got carried away with a case _I_ couldn’t even get a whiff at.  I’d already told myself, “no.”  No new cases.  No new mayhem.  No new anything that involved chasing Sherlock around all-points London.  Just, no.  I was a changed Dr. John H. Watson: Working man.  Father.  Reliable taxpayer.  Unlike Sherlock “I’M BORED!” Holmes.  _Somebody_ had to keep up with bin day and the council tax and the Asda/Tesco/Aldi coupon spreadsheet and hoovering on a regular basis.

 

( _I really can’t miss another day of work and expect to keep my job.  Damn you, Sherlock Holmes._ )

 

“Sherlock,” I said after I burst through the heavy door. 

 

He sat at a stool, Rosie on his knee gazing curiously at a foot.  Not her own foot.   A detached foot.  A fucking detached foot, sitting there on the table top.  Her arms are reaching out for it.  My daughter wants to grab the _fucking detached foot._

 

“Jesus, Sherlock!” I repeated.

 

He turned to me, alarmed and — I’m proud to say it now, because it’s a feat — _surprised_ to see me.  “John,” he said, breezily.  “Done with the clinic already?”

 

“No,” I said.

 

He stared at me in that odd way of his — assessing, as if examining a curious speck of mud.  I knew he was waiting for some further explanation.  I could see Molly standing safely to the side, watching.  I hadn’t anything else to say, so I reached out for Rosie and took her from Sherlock’s knee. 

 

( _I saved her.)_

 

She didn’t protest, and neither did he.  He looked up at me, a peculiar smile on his face. 

 

( _Damn that weird smile._ )

 

“It’s all right now,” I assured her.  “We’ll be home soon.”

 

But Rosie had other things in mind — that detached foot in particular. 

 

And Sherlock, too. 

 

She reached out into the air.  “Sherlock,” she said.  (Aside here, but I still profess — and I profess it often — that I’m not the least bit miffed that Rosie’s first word had been a rather bastardized version of “Sherlock.”  No, I’m perfectly fine with that…)

 

Maybe it’s appropriate.  They both were strangely fascinated with each other.  They could sit on the sofa together for hours: Sherlock reciting the periodic table and Rosie grabbing at his arm, Sherlock reading from a book entitled “Toxic Plants of North America” and Rosie falling asleep against his hip.  I guess I’d never estimated the power a child might have over Sherlock.  My child.  And I always bit my tongue, watching them.  I might have been her father, but Sherlock was her companion.  Oddly enough, that’s how it worked out.

 

And now Sherlock watched my Rosie like he watched one of his chemical experiments, waiting for it to boil or turn colors or whatever.  I felt like shaking him and yelling — ( _“She’s not another experiment!  She’s a living, breathing human being!  She’s my daughter!”_ ) — but I’d feel wrong, maybe, so I didn’t.  Sherlock meant no real harm.  If anything, he’d become Rosie’s second parent. 

 

( _Oh god!  The thought!_ )

 

“We’ll be going home now,” I announced.

 

“I’m not done here yet,” Sherlock said, like it was obvious and despite the fact that Rosie had started to get grumpy.  Dinnertime had come and gone, and I didn’t delude myself into thinking that Sherlock had bothered to feed the child.

 

I said, “That’s fine.  You can stay.”

 

“Hmm,” he hummed.  He stared at the corpse laid out on the table.  It obviously did not own the foot lying on the next table over.  It had its two legs and two feet intact, neither detached from the other.

 

( _My God, I was curious.  Why the dismembered foot?_ )

 

“Why the dismembered foot,” Sherlock murmured, mimicking my thoughts.  He looked at me now, a knowing smirk on his face.

 

I rocked Rosie in my arms; she was already falling asleep against my chest.  I — stupidly, gullibly,  _ugh_ — grinned back at Sherlock.  “You have a theory,” I said.

 

( _I really, really, really cannot miss another day at work._ )

 

“More than a theory,” he said.  “A conclusion.”  Then he drew out the silence, quite needlessly, and he stared at us (I’d almost forgotten Molly was in attendance as well), waiting for someone to catch on.  Nobody would, I knew.  Nobody ever seemed to catch on when Sherlock was on some deductive bent.  His audience — and there invariably always is one, somehow — tended to do a lot of vacant staring during such times, and it’s just fuel for Sherlock’s massive ego.

 

I pulled out the metaphorical drawing pin meant to deflate Sherlock’s over-inflated ego balloon.  I’d gotten good at that: attempting to put on a unified front meant to ground Sherlock.  It wasn’t easy, but it was often necessary.  “And?”

 

“And nothing,” Sherlock concluded with absolute certainty.  “This doesn’t even rate as a four.  Let’s go home.”

 

If Molly seemed merely shocked, then I seemed absolutely flabbergasted.  “I’m sorry?” I said.

 

( _I really, really, really — secretly — wanted this foot thing to rate at the very least a six.  Is he lying?  I think he might be.  He’s such a gifted liar, Sherlock is — and it is a gift, I’ve learned.  A nasty, infuriating, useful gift._ )

 

Sherlock looked at me.  Our eyes met, and I spent a long while trying to figure out what I saw there.  ( _I’m still trying to figure it out, to be honest._ )

 

“Maybe a three, on a good day,” Sherlock amended.

 

He was smiling, and it’s almost the strangest thing I’ve ever seen.  

 

He said again, “Let’s go home.”

 

I don’t pretend to know what’s going on in Sherlock Holmes’ head during any one moment (and I'm glad, what a frightening place that would be), but I feel like I know him well enough to predict what he might be thinking.  In this instance, however, I’m still clueless.  Regrettably.  

 


End file.
